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Bookworlds
Apr. 20th, 2010 11:55 pmI think it was Harry Potter first.
I read it at ten or so, and for the longest time wanted desperately, desperately to go to Hogwarts and learn magic. In the daytime, I knew that I was being silly, but I would think: "Well, I'm not eleven yet--maybe I just might get that owl when I'm eleven..." No owl arrived, I went on with life with a tinge of disappointment, but by then I'd found other books that I could immerse myself in.
I used to live in a prairie town--big town as far as the prairies were concerned, but no more than fifty thousand people at the last count. I read Laura Ingalls Wilder's novels, the almost-autobiographies of the author when she was a young girl on the prairies. I identified with her, and knowing that she'd been real was astonishing: there was a real, live girl who used to live in the same general area (never mind I was in North Dakota, and she lived in South Dakota). She lived almost on the land, with her family claiming a small homestead far out west, while I was living in an apartment, but her life was fascinating. For years after, I would comb through atlases looking for the town she grew up in.
After I read particularly good books, I would walk around in a daze. Only part of my mind was on the real world around me--most of me was still in the bookworld, fighting alongside characters, or just imagining what would happen if....
Many of those childrens' books I read: Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, Chronicles of Prydain, Earthsea Trilogy, A Wrinkle in Time--they were beautifully detailed worlds with realistic characters, and I loved that. That's the thing about reading: the more you read, the more worlds are opened up, and you can carry them around with you, escape into them when you like. No-one can take those away from you. That song from the Reading Rainbow sums it up: "Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high/Take a look, it's in a book/A reading rainbow."
(I'm afraid my internet connection isn't working quite well enough to link it to the actual song, but a quick Youtube search should bring up plenty of hits).
I read it at ten or so, and for the longest time wanted desperately, desperately to go to Hogwarts and learn magic. In the daytime, I knew that I was being silly, but I would think: "Well, I'm not eleven yet--maybe I just might get that owl when I'm eleven..." No owl arrived, I went on with life with a tinge of disappointment, but by then I'd found other books that I could immerse myself in.
I used to live in a prairie town--big town as far as the prairies were concerned, but no more than fifty thousand people at the last count. I read Laura Ingalls Wilder's novels, the almost-autobiographies of the author when she was a young girl on the prairies. I identified with her, and knowing that she'd been real was astonishing: there was a real, live girl who used to live in the same general area (never mind I was in North Dakota, and she lived in South Dakota). She lived almost on the land, with her family claiming a small homestead far out west, while I was living in an apartment, but her life was fascinating. For years after, I would comb through atlases looking for the town she grew up in.
After I read particularly good books, I would walk around in a daze. Only part of my mind was on the real world around me--most of me was still in the bookworld, fighting alongside characters, or just imagining what would happen if....
Many of those childrens' books I read: Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, Chronicles of Prydain, Earthsea Trilogy, A Wrinkle in Time--they were beautifully detailed worlds with realistic characters, and I loved that. That's the thing about reading: the more you read, the more worlds are opened up, and you can carry them around with you, escape into them when you like. No-one can take those away from you. That song from the Reading Rainbow sums it up: "Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high/Take a look, it's in a book/A reading rainbow."
(I'm afraid my internet connection isn't working quite well enough to link it to the actual song, but a quick Youtube search should bring up plenty of hits).
